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Writers: Working with Louise Cusack

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Writers: Working with Louise Cusack

Category Archives: Getting Published series

Kindle Scout: Reader-powered publishing

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, The Publishing Industry, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

amazon, Amazon publishing, books, Kindle publishing, Kindle Scout, literature, publishing, Unpublished Manuscript, writing

scoutpreview

If you’ve never heard of Kindle Scout, don’t feel bad. Until last week, I hadn’t heard of it either, but it’s shaping up to be a game changer for indie authors, as well as traditionally published authors who have a book they just can’t sell, like my unpublished novel SILK (above). SILK is book one of a fantasy romance series that I’ve been trying to sell for years, and I’d love to see it gain a wider readership than I can manage with self publishing, so I’m giving Scout a shot.

HOW SCOUT WORKS: Any Amazon customer can go to the Kindle Scout website (you can see my book on their website here: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/GDATHRYHT8YR) and without needing special logins beyond their normal Amazon account, they can scroll through lists of unpublished books that authors have uploaded and nominate any three. If a book that they nominate is selected by Amazon for publication, the reader receives a free copy as a bonus for supporting the author.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR AMAZON: Publishers are getting savvy about ‘author platform’ and a great book is often not enough to get you a publishing contract. In the Kindle Scout model,  Amazon is not only assessing the popularity of your book excerpt and cover, they’re assessing your social networks (which should equal new readers for them if they publish you). In the “campaign stats” for your book, you can see where the page traffic is coming from. Here are my stats at day 4 of my campaign:

campaignstats5dec2016

I’ve got over 1000 Facebook friends on my personal page, and I called in favours to get shares of my post about SILK there. I also have a Facebook Author page with 1200 Likes, so I’ve boosted that post on Facebook over the next few days to those followers who I hope will take the time to check out the book and nominate it. So my traffic from Facebook is looking good so far. I imagine that as my campaign progresses, the traffic from Kindle Scout will slow as all the habitual ‘scouts’ have looked at SILK and either chosen it or not. However, for all I know there could be hundreds of new ‘scouts’ turning up on the Kindle Scout website every day, so I look forward to assessing that as I go.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU: The end result of your 30 day campaign is that if your book is wildly popular, Amazon may offer you a 5 year contract with a $1,500 advance and 50% eBook royalty rate for worldwide publication rights for eBook and audio formats in all languages. (Authors retain all other rights, including print.) You’d also receive ‘featured Amazon marketing’ which I’m guessing will make your novel far more visible on the Amazon website!

HOW DO AMAZON DECIDE? No one’s quite sure at this stage, but is seems clear that the number of  nominations you receive and the breadth of your social networks play a role, as well as the feedback readers have given on your book when they nominate it (screenshot below):

telluswhatyouthought

HOW DO YOU SUBMIT? The website is simple and the upload is easy but read all the instructions before you start. You’ll need certain answers beyond the blurb and bio, so I found it easier to create a document to list all my answers so I could cut-and-paste them during the submission process. That helps ensure your answers don’t go over the character count limit because if they do, they’ll be cut.

You need to submit a proper book cover as well as the completed and proof-read manuscript in Word format (even though only the first 5000 words are shown to readers). My 5000 words ended 87 words short of a cliffhanger, so I emailed and asked if they could extend the sample that much and they did it immediately, which was great customer service.

Once you’ve uploaded all your bits and pieces, Amazon takes up to 2 days to decide if your work is of sufficient quality to be accepted. If it is, they email you with details and a link to a preview of your campaign page so you can let them know if there are any details you’d like changed (as I did with my excerpt).  Your 30 day campaign usually starts within 48 hours of that acceptance email, so that gives you time to get your “Please nominate me” emails and Facebook posts ready to go. Once your book is live on the Kindle Scout website, you can go to town, calling in all favours and trying to get your book into “Hot and Trending” for as many hours a day as you can manage! Here’s how mine went in the opening days:hottrending5dec2016

Pretty good so far, but 30 days is a sustained effort, and I’ll be away from my computer over Christmas, so I’m giving it my best over the next fortnight and hoping momentum will sustain it after that.

So, that’s where I’m at with it so far. If you’d like more info on Kindle Scout or how I’m going, please feel free to email me mail@louisecusack.com or pop a comment in below about your experiences with Scout if you’ve already tried it. If you’ve got a book in the bottom drawer gathering dust, it could be a good option for moving it forward!

 

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A self publishing adventure

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, The Publishing Industry, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

creative writing, erotica, motivation, psychology of writing, romantic comedy, romcom, self publishing, writing

DigitalPublishingTalkFeb2012Most of you will know me through this website as a writing mentor and teacher, but I’m also a writer. I began my career with fantasy twenty years ago, being published in a Harper Collins anthology, then with a fantasy series published by Simon & Schuster. Since then I’ve been published by the Pan Macmillan imprint Momentum Books, and I’ve dabbled in self publishing backlist titles. But my main focus as an author has always been traditional publishing.

For the last 2 years, however, I’ve been writing books in a romantic comedy series and trying (unsuccessfully) to crack the US market with the opening novel. I quite understand why it’s a hard sell. It involves infidelity which isn’t common in romance novels, and the combination of erotica and romantic comedy is also relatively new. Unfortunately, even well published authors can become demoralized, and when my rejections hit double digits, I found my enjoyment in the work and my motivation were slipping. All my reader feedback on the series, however, was positive, so at the start of the year I took the plunge and decided to self publish these books, and since then I’ve been excited, bewildered at times, but ultimately optimistic.

My reason for blogging this is that I’d like you along for the ride. I’d like to share my experiences with you if you think they’ll help your own writing career. There will be highs and lows, tips and tricks, pitfalls. Hopefully you’ll work out whether self publishing is a road you want to go down, and which path you want to take!

Here are the opening 4 books of my Husband Series (along with a quote I was kindly given by Romance Writers of Australia mate Amy Andrews who’s already a big seller in this genre):

HusbandSeriesAmyQuote

To begin, I’m releasing book one Husband Sit exclusively on Amazon Kindle (where 80% of romance novels are purchased) so I can access their pre-order function, and I’ve set the book at .99c US until its release date of Feb 17, at which point it will revert to $3.99. That’s my incentive for people to BUY NOW! My goal is to see a shirtload of sales go through on release day, which should bump the book up the charts. If a book reaches the Amazon best seller lists in the top #100 it develops a momentum of its own. So if you’ve got .99c US to spare, feel free to pre-order. I won’t complain about you being part of the experiment!

I’m also part of a few Valentine’s Day book hops (promotional opportunities where readers win prizes) and you’re welcome to join them as guests to see how they work. I’ve never done them before so I’m looking forward to finding out myself. Just click on either of the links below and join:

PageCurlValentineBookHop   KindleBookReviewValentine

To complete my promos, I’ve got my own Facebook Release Day Blitz party organized for Feb 17 which you’re most welcome to join. My beta readers are coming and they’ve invited friends. It’s on Facebook so you can wear pajamas! Just click on the picture below and then when you’re on the Facebook event page, select GOING. Facebook will remind you when it’s on.

ReleaseBlitzForHusbandSitFacebook

If you’ve got ideas for me, please share. I’m busily finishing book two so I can upload it in draft form on Amazon before book one goes on sale. That will allow me to set book two on pre-order. I want people to be able to finish Husband Sit and love it so much that they immediately click on the link in the back of the book to pre-order Husband Stay.

My longterm goal is to have twenty books in this series, and the first four will be released this year. Wish me luck!

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A short dream workshop with Sophie Masson

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

books, By the Book, creativity, dreams, literature, short stories, Sophie Masson, stephenie meyer, writers, writing, writing process, writing tips

I’m excited to be inviting Aussie fantasy author Sophie Masson to share some writing tips with us today. But first a little about Sophie:

Sophie portrait blue and redBorn in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in Australia and France, Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of more than 50 novels for readers of all ages, published in Australia and many other countries. Her adult novels include the popular historical fantasy trilogy, Forest of Dreams (Random House Australia). Sophie has always had a great interest in Russian myth and history, an interest reflected in several of her books for younger readers. Her latest Fiction novel is TRINITY: The Koldun Code (Book One)

Sophie is also a teacher of writing, and her book By the Book: Tips of the Trade for Writers is full of practical and entertaining tips on the craft, business and inspirations of writing. From using your dreams to craft great fiction, to writing dream outlines to attract the attention of publishers, from knowing how to make the most of literary festivals to understanding how magical characters tick, from coping with reviews to being inspired by fairy tales, By the Book is bursting with practical, entertaining and illuminating tips on the writing life. Written by an author whose career spans more than twenty years and more than fifty books published, this book offers advice for writers both new, and not so new.

Sophie has very kindly offered to share an extract from the book:

A short dream workshop by Sophie Masson

From time immemorial, human beings have dreamed–every night we go into what one of my sons’ friends once referred to as ‘those brilliant eight hours of free entertainment.’ And from time immemorial, writers have used images or scenes from dreams, or entire dreams, to enrich and expand their creative work in waking life. I’m certainly no exception. My night-imagination has always enriched my day-imagination. Several of my short stories have started directly as dreams, for example, ‘Restless’, a chilling ghost story I wrote not long ago, began as a really creepy and unforgettable nightmare. Another disturbing story, ‘The Spanish Wife’, a vampire story set in the 1930’s, started as a dream in which someone said, very clearly, ‘No-one took any notice of him till he brought home a Spanish wife,’ and that turned into the very first sentence of the short story. Images and scenes from dreams have also gone into my novels, and in one case, a very vivid and intriguing dream inspired an entire six-book children’s fantasy series of mine, the Thomas Trew series. It’s not always fantasy or supernatural stories that have sprung out of dream-compost for me, though; everything from family stories to thrillers to historical novels has benefited from it.

Over the years, I’ve learned quite a few techniques on how to best use vivid, scary, tantalising or intriguing dream sequences in my writing, and how to investigate them for best effects. Here’s a short workshop based on some of the techniques I’ve developed over the years:

*Think of a dream you’ve had. Any dream. It doesn’t have to be anything exciting or unusual. Go back over the dream-scenes, as if you were a police witness being asked to remember an event. Who was in it? What did they look like? What were they wearing?

Were they people you knew or strangers? Were there any animals in it? What sort? What was the setting like? Indoors, outdoors? What could you see? Smell? Touch? Hear? Taste even? What were you in it—a participant, a helpless observer, a godlike figure?

*If you did something supernatural, like flying, what did it feel like, physically? (I’ve often had flying dreams and in them I feel a strong pull in the chest, arms stretching. Once I even woke up with what felt like an actual slight ache in the arm muscles—very spooky indeed!)

*Were there any machines in your dream? If so, what sort?

*Did anyone speak, and if so what did they say? Many dreams in my experience are like silent movies, with thought-subtitles and maybe some music, but a few have dialogue, even if it’s often minimalistic and quite enigmatic.

* Knowledge: Do you know why you were in that particular place, at that time? If you had some supernatural ability, did you know why? If there are interesting objects or gadgets in the setting of your dream, do you know what they can do, and why, and who made or used them? Backstory is very often missing in dreams, but is very important in a story, even if you only spend a few lines on it.

*Now, once you’ve written down as many descriptive details as you can about what was there in the dream, think about what wasn’t there, and write that down. While you were dreaming, did you know for instance why you or other people were doing things(even if it was a kind of weird dream-logic?) Did you understand the sequence of events? Was there a sense the dream was moving towards some conclusion, or just randomly jumping about? Motive, continuity and plot—all very important in actual stories—are often missing from dreams.

*Think of your own self in the dream, however you appeared in it: did you recognise yourself? Did you feel it was fully you or something that was only partly you, or a stranger? Did characters behave randomly? Character development is usually absent in dreams too though it very much needs to be present in a story.

*What about the setting? Were there things missing: for instance, if you were in a house, were there doors? Windows? Furniture? If you were outside, was anything odd: for instance trees growing upside down, or a wall of water appearing out of nowhere?

*Now put those two things together—the things that were there, the ones that weren’t—and you have the beginnings of a real story framework, where the wild imagination of the night and the more disciplined one of the day cross-fertilise and turn into something amazing and wonderful.

bythebookcoversmall_1Thanks Sophie! I’m so looking forward to putting these tips into action. If you’d like to buy a copy of By the Book by Sophie Masson, you can source it here:

Australian Society of Authors or via Amazon if you have a kindle eReader.

You can find Sophie Masson here: Website  Facebook  Twitter

And if you’ve every turned a dream into a story (as I know Stephenie Meyer did with Twilight) I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Happy writing!

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Prioritizing your Passions

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

creativity, finding time, Marie Forleo, prioritizing, writing, writing tips

As a writing mentor, I’ve heard plenty of clients say they “just can’t find time” to fulfill their creative dreams and write a book or even finish a short story. In the real world, aspiring writers might need to work a forty hour week to pay the bills, or fill their day caring for their family. That doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy to invest in what really lights them up.

If this sounds like you, and you’re wondering how you can carve out time for your own dreams when everyone else wants a piece of you, grab a coffee and watch this 5 minute video from the fabulously inspiring and vivacious Marie Forleo, on how to prioritize what’s really important to you:

Do you have a favorite way to prioritize your dreams and ambitions? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below:

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Grammar never goes out of style

28 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

grammar, grammar and style, style, University of Queensland, UQ, Write101x

grammarWriters need grammar, not so we can be pedantic about semi-colons, but to ensure that what we’re trying to convey to readers has some chance of translating intact from our brains to theirs.

My motto with writing is “Clarity above all”, so I’m mindful of the fact that the way we put words together can either help or hinder our readers when they engage with our stories (or our blogs, Facebook posts, Tweets). Grammar and style are vital elements of writing, yet many creative, talented writers need help in this area.

Because of that, I’m excited to recommend a user-friendly FREE course on Grammar and Style through the University of Queensland (Australia). Here’s some detail:

WRITE101x will introduce you to some marvelous and quirky resources that we have annotated for your guidance, show you video clips of interviews that we conducted with distinguished grammarians, challenge you with quizzes and writing activities that will give you strategies to help you to build skills that will enhance the quality of your writing, and invite you to enter into discussions and assess the work of your peers in an interactive environment.

WRITE101x begins September 22nd   2014 and you can enroll now.

If you want a solid grounding in grammar, or simply want to brush-up your skills, this course might be perfect for you!

 

 

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5 Day Intensive Manuscript Development Program

30 Friday May 2014

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

5DI, Australia, fiction manuscripts, manuscript, manuscript development, manuscript development program, romance, Romance Writers, romance writers of Australia, RWA, writing

Australian fiction writers, I’d like to give you the heads-up about a fabulous opportunity to develop your finished manuscript to publication standard. Romance Writers of Australia are running 5DI, a five day intensive manuscript development program with International best-selling authors as tutors.

t-m-clarkAustralian author T.M. Clark has done 5DI twice and both her novels have sold to Harlequin MIRA.

She said, “I did this 5Di – 5 day intensive – twice, in my journey towards publication. I can’t hold it in high enough regard. By Brother-But-One was my first book that attended, and Tears of A Cheetah (To be publish December 15) was the second. SOOOOOOO worth paying for the help and investing in yourself for the week. Writers – a must!”

Speaking as a tutor, I can attest to the fact that these intensive manuscript development programs really work. Ten years ago I was a tutor for the  EnVision manuscript development program which focused on speculative fiction manuscripts. Over the years I’ve seen many of the EnVision attendees go on to publication, and the quantum leap in writing craft they achieved in that week of intensive learning astonished even the tutors. As I result I’ve advised clients to attended 5DI, and those who have done so have spoken highly of the experience.

These sorts of immersion opportunities don’t come along every week, or even every year. Romance Writers of Australia’s 5DI is for manuscripts “in any romantic sub genre, including mainstream books with romantic elements. This workshop is open to all members of RWA who are aspiring and emerging authors and over 18 years of age.” (Read their conditions of entry for all eligibility criteria.)

Any fiction manuscript with romantic elements (sex, attraction, a love story subplot) should qualify whether it’s a crime novel, a fantasy, paranormal, young adult, etc, and the joining fee for RWAustralia membership will provide you with more writing support and industry information than you can now imagine. You have to qualify to attend 5DI, so do read the entry information carefully.

If you want to take your writing to the next level, I urge you to apply for this opportunity. If you are accepted, I promise you’ll get your money’s worth (and more).

Details are here:

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My favourite “How To” writing books

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Forest for the trees, How To, On Writing, Rennie & Brown, self help, Stephen King, writing

Writing BooksI’ve read hundreds over the years, but I keep coming back to these ones + Stephen King’s On Writing which must be on loan. I can’t find it in my bookcase.

What are your favorite “How To” writing books?

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Motivation + Time = Maximum Productivity

20 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Understanding Ourselves as Writers

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

creativity, doing the work, emotion, glass half full, inspiration, list, motivation, new year, process of writing, psychology, publishing, writers, writing, writing tips

I’ve chatted to writers all year, and some have had a fabulous 2013. Some, not so great. One of the things I’ve noticed (not just this year, but every year) is that those writers who have a strong motivation to write, seem to get more done.

It sounds like a no brainer. If you’re dieting for no good reason, mud cake looks good. If your wedding is in three weeks (or your book launch) and you need to fit into that special dress, carrot sticks are the new chocolate.

So motivation – for characters and for writers – is key. And at the start of a story when the idea is fresh and the potential sales appear JK Rowling-ish, delusions of grandeur can take you far. As a mentor, I never knock writers off their lofty fantasy pedestals. It motivates them to get up early and work late (creating the time factor of the equation all by themselves). In fact, I encourage writers to pick a fantasy moment: walking the red carpet, getting a big advance payment in the mail, opening the box full of advance copies of their book and loving the cover, and then milking that fantasy for five minutes every day, wringing every bit of happy/ relieved/ satisfied/ thrilled emotion they can out of it. That builds motivation too.

The reality may end up looking like this:

The Bentley you thought you'd be buying with your first advance

The Bentley you thought you’d be buying with your first advance

Here Bentley, Here, Bentley. Good dog!

Here Bentley, Here, Bentley. Good dog!

So reality can dent your confidence, and therefore your motivation. How do you pick yourself up when you’ve had rejection in the past, you’ve lost perspective on your story, and you’re starting to doubt that it will ever get published, and if it does, that anyone will bother to read/ like it? Perhaps life itself has dealt you a crap year and those muddy glasses are making everything look terrible, including your writing.

Dear Manuscript, you look like this...

Dear Manuscript, you look like this…

Sometimes you have to start back at bedrock and just work at making yourself happy. My experience as a mentor has shown me that happy writers are productive writers and I reject the cliché that starving/troubled artists write the best work. We all experience life’s ugly moments. Some writers unfortunately have had more pain than others. And yes we do draw on memories of those dark times to bring our stories vividly to life. But we don’t have to be experiencing that pain now to be writing our best. We simply need to be good at remembering what it felt like, and luckily for us, really bad moments seem to be engraved in our memories!

Publishers and agents want to work with productive writers, those who can create saleable novels year in, year out, building readership and thereby sales and profits for all. If you can get happy and stay happy, you’ll have your best shot at being that author. The delightful side-effect is that you’ll also be a fab person to be around, and family and friends will stop doing this when you walk in the room:

Has she made her word count? Is her eye twitching. For godsakes, Marg, whatever you do, don't mention the manuscript.

Has she made her word count? Is her eye twitching? I can’t look.

So here’s my tip for the end of the year, to wash away any unpleasantness from 2013 and set yourself up for a cracker super-happy ultra-productive 2014. Make up a list like mine (takes five minutes in Microsoft Word) and sit down with a pen and paper and fill it in. Honestly, I had thirty done in ten minutes:

One hundred fabulous memories from 2013As you remember each fabulous thing that’s happened to you in the year, no matter how small, it will trigger happy feelings, and before you know it you’ll be glass half full instead of glass half empty about everything, writing included. My list included everyday things like:

  • Standing on the verandah watching a thunderstorm
  • Eating a perfect lime slushy on that really hot afternoon
  • Watching the Aussies win the Ashes on tv (cricket, for those who don’t know)
  • Laughing at the cat that time he rolled in his sleep and fell off the chair
  • Watching Meg’s eyes light up when she talked about her new home

I also included some personal peak moments that really meant something to me. So you get the idea. Fill up the list, really feel the emotions, reliving all their splendor as you write, then make time with your morning coffee each day to have a glance through it again and let the happy memories make you smile.

I pinky-promise it will help you let go of the negativity that weighs you down and squashes your creative inspiration. Then you’ll be all set up for a fabulously successful, productive, satisfying and fun 2014.

Go for it!

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Perseverance: One Writer’s Journey

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Understanding Ourselves as Writers

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

books, contracts, editing, getting published, literary agency, literature, manuscript, manuscript assessment, perserverance, publishing, submission, writers, writing, writing tips

I’d like to introduce a client of mine, Alison Mather, who’s recently signed with a prestigious literary agency in the UK. She’s had an interesting journey (to say the least) and has agreed to share it with you. I think you’ll find it inspiring:

Perseverance. It’s a word most commonly used when telling a person’s story of triumph, after they’ve triumphed – which is all well and good and serves as a reminder that your goal can be achieved, but is utterly horrible when you’re actually trying to do it: being perseverant. At least it is to me. I find it very much akin to what I imagine being lost in the wilderness to be like (without the constant threat of sudden death). What direction should I take? How do I know if this step is the right one? What if I’m just going around in circles? Why are the signposts so damned hard to find?

Okay, so that’s where the analogy ends because most people know that the best thing to do if you are physically lost is to stay still and that is absolutely, positively the worst thing you could do if you ever want to be a published author.

During my own journey as a writer I have asked all of these questions every step of the way, and a heck of a lot more. The results can be stultifying and very damaging to your chances if you are the sort to give up easily.

I am one of ‘those’ people who took time off to write. I am very lucky to have an extremely supportive spouse who encouraged me to do so. If you are now thinking that means I’ve had it easy, think again. Six months into writing my first manuscript I was diagnosed with thyroid disease, my husband was retrenched from his job and a 24 foot tree fell on our house during the big Brisbane storms. Add to that, I received nothing but rejection letters to every single query I sent out to publishers and agents. Things were not going to plan and it was very, very hard.

Somehow, though – and here is where the perseverance bit comes in – I managed to write a second, and much better, manuscript and tried again. Now, five years later, I have just signed with a literary agency and am starting work on editing the story – for what feels like the billionth time – in the more real hope of interesting a publisher.

Not the ideal journey to becoming an author, perhaps, but here’s what I’ve learned:

Your writing is key – do everything possible to ensure it is the best it can be, and I don’t mean asking your family. They will always be on your side and that’s not what you need. Join your local Writer’s Centre and find a manuscript assessor. I edited my own work three times and then hired Louise to edit it again. Is it really worth the expense? I sent my work, edited by me, to every publisher in Australia and it was rejected. I paid for professional advice and now I have an agent.

Listen to everything that’s being said to you by the people who know. I was rejected by a tonne of agents earlier this year but one actually took the time to write a personal letter of explanation suggesting that I was aiming at the wrong age group. I was so cut up about the rejection that I almost missed the significance of that particular crumb of advice. And they will be crumbs and you have to fall on them like they’re nuggets of gold, even if all you can hear is the criticism.

Cast a wide net – as in global wide.  My agent is in London. By all means go local to begin but understand that there are a handful of publishers and agents in Australia and a shedload of writers – unless you’ve written that must-have story in which case I’m struggling with my resentment. I smashed the internet doing research and you really have to look. I strongly recommend the following websites: www.literaryrambles.com for agents that rep in your genre, www.writersdigest.com for new agents alerts – you have far more chance with agents who are looking to build their lists, Sarah’s blog at www.greenhouseliterary.com for tips on query writing and many more that I can’t fit in here.

Remember, I was totally green, I knew nothing about the industry that I was hoping to carve a career in, but I dedicated myself to it utterly and I’ve made it this far. You can too.

Alison Mather signing her agency contract

Alison Mather signing her agency contract

Writing success really is one part inspiration and ten parts perspiration. Keep at it, and if you’ve got any tips on how to keep motivation up while persevering, do share them with us below. Cheers! Louise

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Writers: The Power of Viewpoint

21 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

characterisation, characterization, characters, fiction, internal conflict, internal life, manuscript assessment, point of view, published, viewpoint, writing tips

Last year 7 of my clients were contracted for the first time by some pretty prestigious publishing houses. In the current publishing climate that deserves a Wahoo! But it also warrants a bit of analysis. Why did those 7 manuscripts get across the line and not manuscripts from the other 15 clients who I either mentored or did manuscript assessments for. In a word, their strength was…

Viewpoint.

Each of those 7 ‘lucky’ authors had a strong grasp of viewpoint hold (sometimes called point of view) and as a result their characters came alive on the page. We saw the world through the filter of the character’s senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing) and were privy to the character’s internal life (thoughts and feelings) which revealed inner conflicts that upped the ante of the external conflicts the character was already facing. Each genre has it’s own formula for how much of the character’s internal life should make it onto the page. Action adventure novels at the low end, romance and women’s fiction at the high end. But wherever your novel fits into that spectrum, you do need to understand and use viewpoint to make us care enough about your characters to read a whole book about them.

I recently assessed a manuscript that had viewpoint problems and I’d like to share here a small section of that report:

iStock_000017868898XSmallTo create an internal life for the characters and thus build characterization, we need to know what characters are thinking and feeling. If the majority of the novel is action and dialogue with hardly any thoughts and feelings expressed, it doesn’t help us get to know your characters. And if we don’t know him and care about his journey, why should we bother to read about it?

The proviso here is that you only give us the thoughts of the character who has viewpoint at the time. Stay deep in their thoughts, feelings, physical reactions, to help us bond with them and feel as if we are them for the period of time that we’re reading.

We need to feel the character’s fear, not just see the circumstances that would inspire fear. And I don’t mean to write He was scared. In a story written for adults you have to pull us into the character’s emotions by ‘showing’ them, not ‘telling’ us about them. Does his pulse jump when he’s excited? Does his heart slow when he’s scared? Does it thump unevenly when he’s terrified? Can he stride when he’s confident and stagger when he’s overwhelmed? Show us how his emotions affect him, and above all keep us in the loop with his thoughts. Not just thoughts about what’s happening right now.  Memories, and visualizations of what you think the future may hold, both have the power to evoke emotion. You need to create a depth to the story because action and dialogue just skims the surface of the character’s experience of what’s happening. You have to make us feel if you want us to care!

Whenever I meet agents or publishers and ask them what they’re looking for, they always give me some version of “An interesting story with characters that I care about.” Every time. Interesting story (plot). Characters I care about (characterization).

Your number one tool to build characterization is viewpoint. Learn it (there are heaps of resources on the internet to help you and I’ve got one on my website here). Practise it. Get published!

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Welcome Writers!

I'm Louise Cusack, an Australian author of fantasy and romance published by Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, and Pan Macmillan. I also mentor and tutor other writers like yourself. Please avail yourself of the resources on this website, and happy writing!

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